An alternating-current surface discharge type panel as a representative plasma display panel (PDP) has multiple discharge cells formed between oppositely disposed front board and rear board. The front board has a plurality of pairs of display electrodes consisting of a pair of scanning electrode and sustain electrode formed parallel to each other on a front glass substrate, and a dielectric layer and a protective layer are formed to cover these display electrodes. The rear board has a plurality of parallel data electrodes formed on a rear glass substrate, a dielectric layer to cover them, and a plurality of partition walls formed thereon parallel to the data electrodes, and a phosphor layer is formed on the surface of dielectric layer, and at the side of partition walls.
The front board and rear board are oppositely disposed and sealed so that display electrodes and data electrodes may intersect three-dimensionally, and the inside discharge space is filled with discharge gas. Discharge cells are formed in the opposing parts of display electrodes and data electrodes. In the panel having such configuration, ultraviolet rays are generated in each discharge cell by gas discharge, and the phosphors of RGB colors are excited and illuminated by the ultraviolet rays, and a color display is achieved.
A general method of driving the panel is sub-field method, in which one field period is divided into a plurality of sub-fields, and by combination of sub-fields to be illuminated, gradation display is made. In this method, by applying a writing pulse between the data electrode and scanning electrode, write discharge is conducted between the data electrode and scanning electrode. After selecting a discharge cell, by applying periodic sustain pulses inverting alternately between the scanning electrode and sustain electrode, sustain discharge is conducted between the scanning electrode and sustain electrode, and specified display is made.
Such driving method of panel in conventional plasma display panel is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. H11-109915.
In such conventional plasma display device, however, initializing waveform may not be always issued right after turning on the power, and if the electric charge generated finally in the preceding time of power feed is left over in the discharge cells, these discharge cells are not initialized, and sustain discharge occurs by the first sustain operation after turning on the power, and undesired illumination may momentarily appear on the screen, which causes to lower the display quality.